


Cute and shameless

by laudanum_and_wine



Category: Beetlejuice (1988), Beetlejuice - All Media Types
Genre: Best Friends, Enemies to Friends, Gen, Irresponsible Uncle Beetlejuice
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:33:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23150086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laudanum_and_wine/pseuds/laudanum_and_wine
Summary: Lydia feels guilty, but Beetlejuice is shockingly unphased by her betrayal: she's not exactly the first person to murder him, why get upset about it? For Lydia, talking to a guy who's made as many bad decisions as Beetlejuice is more fun than listening to four overprotective parents. For Beetlejuice, talking to an impressionable kid is more fun than wading through bureaucracy, plus he's always wanted to teach someone all his best cons! By the time she grows up she sure as hell won't be just another pretty face.
Relationships: Beetlejuice & Lydia Deetz
Comments: 7
Kudos: 59





	1. Chapter 1

When the call came through he almost missed it because he was really thinking hard about ducks and why their feet didn't freeze. He was convinced that at some point he'd been told why they didn't freeze, like a documentary or something? He was sure that the first thing he'd do once he was past the waiting room was to track down a dead duck and ask it. Not that it would tell him much, and had he ever seen a dead duck? Not sure, couldn't recall.

Luckily he did actually notice the pull, halfway through the second repetition of his name. It wasn't a full summoning and thanks to the time dilation he could tell there wouldn't be a third call, but two was all he needed to get out of this damn room and have a chat at least.

He glanced at his ticket number, then the ticket listing the current client being served, and figured the odds of him being gone long enough to miss his appointment were pretty low. So he stood, dusted his lapels, politely asked the blonde next to him to save his seat or something similar, was summarily slapped, then was gone with a snap of his fingers. Blonde broad seemed to be warming up to him, since it had been a less intense slap this time.

The void swirled black and white, strobe flashes, then he was standing in front of a smoky dresser with an antique frame on its top. The whole room was a shadowy shimmer, suggested objects built of smoke and magic, pale colors the inverse of whatever was in the living world. Someone was calling him via mirror. He stepped up to the bureau and peered through the frame into the world beyond. 

"I'm so sorry B," the girl behind the mirror gushed, and he blinked in confusion. He glanced around her side of the room, chin tucking in and eyes wide, looking for a threat that would warrant that apology. He found none.

"Okay?"

The little girl in front of him screwed her eyes shut and looked about to cry.

"Hey, kid, uhm. Calm down? You're cool, it's cool, everything's groovy," he glanced around again, realizing she was alone. She'd used a mirror summoning, which was VERY clever and meant she'd probably read the whole of the handbook and then some, and that was no small task for a kid, teen or not. He took a moment to really eyeball the crying girl and remembered her. Despite his jubilation at recognition he managed to keep his voice even.

"Poe's Daughter, hey, don't cry. Come on, stop that squirt," he tried a gentle tone. She didn't stop. "Hey no, listen. Hey. Lyds, cut that shit out."

She glanced up then, and he supposed it was the less than patient note in his voice now. 

"Lyds?" She asked.

"What, you get to call me 'B' and I don't get a nickname for ya? Hypocrisy is what that is, pure unfair hypocrisy."

"You know why I'm not using your real name," she wiped her eyes and looked up at him.

"Alright, maybe not pure hypocrisy, but still," he leaned on the top of the reflected dresser in his side of the mirror and let her dry her eyes a bit. It seemed the crying jag was over. "So what's going on babes? What's with the water works?"

She sniffled one last time and looked around the room like she was nervous. He felt bad about whatever he'd done to make a kid nervous in a nebulous way, then remembered exactly what he'd done, then made a concerted effort not to feel bad.

"I thought- okay, the irony is not lost on me but… I thought you were dead and it was all my fault."

"I mean I am and it is but like, pft, what's a little murder in the big picture?" He waved a hand dismissively. She wasn't the first girl to kill him.

"No, but I thought… The Maitlands didn't think you'd be okay after the sandworm. They thought you might be in the Lost Souls Room," she didn't meet his gaze.

"Oh. Well maybe, if I wasn't just such a complete and total badass, but no: I'm fine. Was hanging in the waiting room when you rang, chit chatting a cute blonde" he dusted some lingering sand off his suit. "I'm a-okay kiddo."

Lydia's face twisted just a little, like she'd just remembered something. She straightened her shoulders and lifted her little chin.

"I'm glad. You're a lying cowardly pervert," she kept talking over his wordless objection, "But I didn't want to be responsible for you being gone forever."

The smokey room on his side of the connection washed red. She had the gall to call him, waste his time, apologize, then walk it back like that?!

"Listen here, chica," he leaned across the barrier of the mirror and into her face. She recoiled back, apparently shocked that he wasn't trapped behind glass. "I ain't no damn liar and you know it! Sure, I might bend the truth, but I saved your fuckin ghost buddies and held up my end of the deal: you got no moral fuckin high-ground on me. Don't call me up, acting half-superior even when you apologize like you can do no fuckin wrong: I still got murdered!"

Her eyes darted down to his hands on the wood of the dresser, and he realized his red claws were gouging lines in the wood surface. On her side of the mirror. It took a solid five seconds for him to calm himself enough to un-manifest the long predatory nails and lean back into the mirror. He realized his rage had warped the mirror-room until it was soaked with a blood red pulsing glow. This was not a great look for him, in light of her fear and trauma and whatever. 

The girl did something fast with her hand, then threw something right at him. Just as he braced to be hit by whatever it was, a cloud obscured his vision, and when it cleared the mirror was blank. It reflected only the dull red of the room around him, which was fast fading to smoke and shadow. He glanced down at the dresser, which now showed the reflected version of the crap she'd thrown and had bounced against the glass barrier on both sides: talc and ashes and egg shells, with herbs and bits of dirt. She'd thrown a handful of the specially concocted dust to sever the mirrors connection, but the spectral version of the room had kept just enough of a link to show the falen powder even on his side. 

Without thinking too much about it he scribbled a quick word into the residue left on the bureau, hoping that she'd see it. 

He considered returning to the waiting room, watching the red walls fade to nothing. As the connection to the living world faded he saw time stretched like taffy. Hours squeezed through the glass, his blink was a day, he still hadn't decided to stay or go. 

The tug of his name shook the bureau violently, dust scattered to the floor. The mirror flashed white, then there was Lydia again, new dress, new hair, new day showing through the window behind her. He guessed it had been a week.

"Sorry," he cleared his throat and looked away, tapping his now short nails on the spectral wood grain where that word word had once been traced. The dust showed a hint left of the letters. "Listen kid, I may not have made the best of impressions, what with the drinking and violence and hookers…"

"And attempted forced marriage," Lydia was again standing several paces back from her side of the glass.

"Correction: successful forced marriage. I was just promptly murdered by a crazy sandworm-riding bitch in a hideous wedding gown."

She blinked at him.

"Wait, okay, stop derailing me-"

"I'm a widow?" Lydia interrupted.

"Sure-"

"But I never said 'I do' or anything."

"Ya did when you agreed to the deal to start w-"

"I'm a WIDOW."

"Sorry, but-"

"That is so fucking cool," her voice was quiet and full of awe. He regretted swearing in front of her as much as he had. He wasn't gonna stop though. 

"Yeah. Kid. What the fuck do you want?" Betelgeuse slouched against the dresser's top, unsure what his point had even been. 

"I wanted to apologize."

"Super, done, thanks: apology for standing-by-while-your-husband-was-murdered accepted. We done here?"

She seemed to be thinking it over. The puff of dust in front of his nose didn't surprise him. He threw up both hands, rolled his eyes, making a show of exasperation for an audience of no one.

Time for him was one frustrated growl, but when the mirror flashed to life it was obvious early morning for her.

"Sleep well there, Princess?" He sneered, all ruffled feathers and frustration in the face of their intermittent conversation. 

"You're my ex-husband," she said.

"I mean, don't think people normally call their dead spouses their 'ex' but yeah, great, whatever floats yer boat," he was carving into the ethereal wood veneer with one fingernail now, just pissed off enough to form one long claw.

"So we should definitely get along."

He looked up.

"Getting along with an ex is normal," she said slowly. 

"Sure."

"In fact, one might go so far as to say it's a social obligation," she'd stepped closer, folding her arms across the dresser top as well. He eyed the hair gel in her fringe and nodded.

"Sure."

"So I guess we'll just have to be friends," she half shrugged, then smiled. His claw was gone. He wasn't sure what he thought, other than-

"You are a weird weird kid, Poe."

She wrinkled her nose and thought about the nickname for a bit, then nodded. "Yeah, probably. But all my friends are dead people. Don't think you're special or anything."

"This your way of making amends for the murder-by-inaction?" 

"Well I can't marry you again, you're an ex right? It'd ruin my reputation," Her eyebrow was raised, like it was all hilarious. It was, just not in a laughter kinda way.

"Okay, deal: we're friends," he pushed a hand through the glass, and she shook it as though she wasn't freaked the fuck out about him being in the room.

"If I'm Poe, I'm totally calling you Romero."

"Knock yourself out, kiddo," and with that she was helping pull an ethereal version of him through the mirror to fall to the floor of her real living-world bedroom. 

It wasn't out. It wasn't freedom. But it also wasn't the waiting room, and that meant it might be fun.


	2. Chapter 2

"You could just properly call me, ya know. Wouldn't have to heave my ho through a mirror, I could just, bam, show up with confetti and bells on. Literal bells, if you like," he was complaining even as she helped haul him through the mirror. It seemed with two recitations of his name he could manage to be semi-corporeal, though according to the Handbook that shouldn't be possible. She was beginning to think that whoever wrote the Handbook was a total moron.

"I don't think we are quite that close of friends just yet," she grumbled, then he was over the lip of the mirror and falling on top of her to the floor of her room. She coughed, "You smell like a dead racoon."

"Yeah," he jumped up, then hauled her to her feet, then finally sniffed at his coat. "That'd be the dead duck, actually. I can understand your confusion though: dead mammal, dead bird, same basic thing really."

Lydia wrinkled her nose and pushed him out into the hall, "Roof! We can talk on the roof, where there's a cross breeze."

"So to what do I owe the dubious pleasure of your not-summoning?" He dawdled in the hall, poking at one of Delia's sculptures until it nearly tumbled to the ground. Lydia steadied it then shoved him again roughly, leading him through a guest bedroom and out a window onto the roof. She finally gasped a few deep breaths once upwind from him.

"Jesus! You cannot tell me you can stand that smell!"

"I'm dead, kiddo. I can barely smell anything at all," he shrugged, dropped to sit with legs hanging off the roof, and lit a cigarette. After a minute he eyed it, then her, and scooted further down wind. "So how's your week going?" His tone was saccharine. 

"I just needed someone to talk to," she was settling on the shingles a few feet away, legs pulled to her chest. 

"Mh," he responded noncommittally.

"I don't want to talk to my parents about some shit, you know? And Barbara is so, I don't know, positive? All the time!" She felt stupid saying it.

"Well I promise not to be at all positive then. Life is short and painful, then you die and death is long and boring. Everything sucks!" He was gesturing with one hand, trying to sound serious while watching her out of the corner of his eye.

She wrapped her arms around her legs and smiled over her knees at him, "Thanks for the pep-talk."

They sat for a while in silence, he flicked his cigarette butt off the roof, scowling when none of the bushes below caught on fire.

"So there's this girl and she's essentially making my life hell," Lydia finally confessed. 

"Want me to kill her?"

"No, but thanks. Barbara thinks I should try being friends with her. Delia thinks I should ignore her. Daddy won't talk to me about her, and Adam just nods and says 'Teenage girls are evil,' or something then tries to give me advice on ignoring her too. I don't need it fixed, I don't need solutions, I just. Want to tell someone how unfair it is, and have them not try to fix things!" Her voice was muffled now, her face pressed into her arms.

"Okay, well. What's she like?"

"A heinous grade-a bitch! But like, perfect. Blonde, rich, gorgeous. If she was ugly and a bully that'd be one thing, but she's not, she's got everything and legs for days," Lydia sighed. "Like, it'd be one thing if she was being bullied and taking it out on others, I'd kinda pity her. But she's got everything and somehow that's made her nasty."

"Trust me kid," Beetlejuice picked his teeth casually then flopped back to stare at the clouds. "That chicks probably got Daddy issues out both ears and it's gonna get real fuckin amusing when she gets older."

Lydia scrunched her nose and stared at the horizon like the thought was unpleasant, but after a few silent minutes she was smirking. 

"You think so..?" She sounded a little guilty and a lot happy about it.

"Oh yeah, spoiled little blonde girl, gets everything she wants but mommy and daddy's attention? She's going to implode in a sorority somewhere in two or three years, it's going to be a beautiful trainwreck. End up some trophy wife with no friends and too much product in her hair," His eyes drifted shut as he spoke and he managed to suppress a smile. "You ever met her mom?"

"No."

"Bet you she's the exact same."

"Bet me what?" She asked.

He sat up.

"Hm, bet you… One day of freedom," he went on when she snorted. "Annnnd, if I'm wrong, I'll pull one solid prank on good old Claire, dealer's choice. Non fatal, even."

"Seems like either way you win," she groused.

"Okay, free lesson kiddo: when you can, always pitch a deal that sounds good but is good for ya either way, right? Best case they don't notice, worst case they talk you down to a fair deal. And never take a fair deal, babes, I mean why even bother, ya know? What's the fuckin point."

She sat for a long time while he watched the sky darken slowly, she was obviously chewing on his words, which was funny since he'd just told her it was a bad deal, but whatever. 

"Fine. I'll ask around this week and find out about her mom, BUT you have to promise: if you win and get free for the day, no outright murder, okay?" Her tone was dry, like she knew he'd agree but didn't expect him to really manage to mean it. Like he was a murderous freak, which, okay, fair, but shouldn't she care a little more?

He sat up and squinted at the girl, trying to sort out her angle for a few minutes before nodding.

"Deal."

She rolled her eyes and stood, like he'd been being dramatic, him! 

"You wanna go egg Claire's house?" He raised his eyebrows hopefully. 

"Nah, I don't wanna risk seeing her and further wrecking my day."

"Is it that ugly mansion on Mill street?"

"Yeah," she flopped back to stare at the clouds and he joined her.

"If you want I could do it for you, you know the magic words…" he trailed off.

She pointed up, "That one looks like a lion." She blew off his suggestion. 

"Or a cheerleader sawed in half."

"I don't see it." 

He rolled his eyes and kicked his feet and settled in for a boring, if pleasant, afternoon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp, here's a short update! I'm gonna get to get back on writing to get you all more updates, sorry for the unexpected hiatus for a bit there. :/ Being stuck indoors has just TANKED my drive to do, uhm, anything. Stress isn't helping, to be fair. BUT. I'm gonna try for short chapters, just to keep things moving, and hopefully keep y'all a little entertained in this weird trying time we're having!


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